Right now as I type this, I feel like I have three prickly stray eyelashes behind the actual eyeball. They are not underneath the eyeball on the lower rim where I could reach them with minimal effort, nor just to the side where I could poke at them with my pinkie. The rogue eyelashes feel as if they have migrated into my brain.
“Quit rubbing your eyes so much then,” barks The Husband unhelpfully, “You do this to yourself.” I rub them some more, partly to prove The Husband wrong, and partly because they itch. My hands need to be sequestered far away from my eyes, like jurors in a high-profile case. My hands should have a restraining order from my eyes. Hands and eyes should dutifully stay on their own parts of the body and do what they each do best: hands can wave politely at neighbors at the bus stop, and eyes can blink.
I’ve never been to an optometrist about my little “problem” because I know exactly what would happen: my eyes would bother me for the week leading up to the appointment and then on the actual day would be 100% fine. This is called the Murphy’s Law of Medicine: whatever ailment you go in for, you will be miraculously free of symptoms when the doctor looks at you. My insurance does not give me any kind of break in the co-pay for absence of symptoms. In fact, I think they charge double.
That weird rash on my leg? Gone for two hours on Wednesday morning, starting with the minute the receptionist says, “MOV? The doctor will see you now.” Swollen glands around my neck area that have been bothering me for a week? Smooth and unpuffy on appointment day. That gray spot indicating a potential cavity on one of my molars? Just a tooth stain laughs my dentist after I drove 45 minutes in traffic to his office for an emergency appointment. I suck at being sick. I go to the bathroom and splash water in my eyes. Water water water. I am a fish. My beleaguered eyes have gone from pink and mildly irritated to red and demanding to talk to a manager.
“Sweetie, you should lie down,” says The Husband with a sigh. I do as instructed: I lie on the bed with a cold, wet washcloth rolled up over my sore eyes, eyes that have been working too hard at doing exhausting things, like seeing. A few minutes later, The Husband forgets all about my eye situation. He walks in the bedroom, flips the lights on full bright, and says something I might have been known to say to him once or twice in the past, “Sweetie! You have to read this thing I just wrote!”
MOV
